, meantime, how much is
_that_? Too probably, except in the case of here and there some
specially intelligent or specially influential sepoy officer,
indispensable as a go-between to the non-military conspirators moving
in darkness behind the rebel army, nothing at all was communicated to
the bulk of the privates, beyond the mere detail of movements required
by the varying circumstantialities of each particular case. But of the
ultimate purpose, of the main strategic policy, or of the transcendent
interests over-riding the narrow counsels that fell under the
knowledge of the illiterate soldier, since no part was requisite to
the fulfilment of each man's separate duty, no part would be
communicated. It is barely possible that so much light as may be won
from confessions, combined with so much further light as may be
supposed to lurk amongst the mass of unexamined papers left behind
them by the rebels at Delhi, might tell us something important. But
any result to be expected from the Delhi papers is a doubtful
contingency. It is uncertain whether they will ever be brought under
the review of zeal united to sagacity sufficient for sustaining a
search purely disinterested. Promising no great triumph for any
literary purpose, proving as little, perhaps, one way or other, as the
mathematician in the old story complained that the _AEneid_
proved--these papers, unless worked by an enamoured bookworm (or
paperworm), will probably be confiscated to some domestic purpose, of
singeing chickens or lighting fires.

But, in any case, whether speaking by confessions or by the varied
memoranda (orders to subaltern officers, resolutions adopted by
meetings, records of military councils, petitions, or suggestions on
the public service, addressed to the king, &c.), abandoned in the
palace at Delhi, the soldier can tell no more than he knew, which,
under any theory of the case, must have been very little. Better,
therefore, than all expectations fixed on the vile soldiery, whom, in
every sense, and in all directions, I believe to have been brutally
ignorant, and through their ignorance mainly to have been used as
blind servile instruments--better and easier it would be to examine
narrowly whether, in the whole course and evolution of this stupendous
tragedy, there may not be found some characterising feature or
distinguishing incident, that may secretly report the agency, and
betray, by the style and character of the workmanship, _who_ mig